


A Fathers Love

by DawnMunn



Series: A Fathers Love [1]
Category: NCIS
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-09
Updated: 2017-10-09
Packaged: 2019-01-15 07:08:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,249
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12316209
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DawnMunn/pseuds/DawnMunn
Summary: What happens when Tony arrives home to find that there's a baby on his doorstep, is it his and who was his mother? As Gibbs also has a reunion with someone from his past, can she help Tony learn to become a father and can he help her get over the loss of her husband and can they find love together?





	A Fathers Love

A Fathers Love 

 

After spending a long few days with a case and not having much chance of getting home, Tony was finally glad to be home and was looking forward to getting a catch up on some sleep, but there was still a shock and surprise to come to him.

 

As he approached his apartment door he was very surprised to see that there was a box sitting outside the front door, especially as he knew that he hadn’t actually ordered anything. When he did finally look into the box he was very surprised when looking back at him was a baby boy. Before doing anything else he was straight on the phone to Gibbs and as soon as he answered Tony said “Boss I’ve got a slight problem here.”

Gibbs replied “What is it DiNozzo? Spit it out.”

He answered “I’ve just come home to find that there’s a baby on my doorstep.”

Gibbs then asked “Are you kidding?”

To which Tony replied “No I’m not boss, I’m deadly serious, there’s a box sitting here with a baby inside it.”

With that Gibbs said “Ok, I’ll be right over.” And with that he disconnected the call.

 

By the time Gibbs gets to Tony’s apartment it’s to find him with a shocked look on his face, making Gibbs grow more concerned about the situation so he goes over and asks “What’s wrong?”

Tony answers very quietly “I saw the note just inside the box and opened it, this baby is supposed to be mine.”

Gibbs then asks “How do you mean?”

Tony answers as he hands the note over to Gibbs “It says that he’s mine, that whoever his mother is can’t cope with him and she’s handing him over to me.”

Gibbs then says “Ok. So how do you want to play this? Because we will need to open up an investigation.”

Tony says “I know that we have to boss, but I think that first of all I just really need to find out if he is mine or not.”

Just after he finishes saying it his next door neighbour comes out and says “Sorry I just heard voices and wondered what was going on.” After a pause she then adds with having recognized Gibbs “And I didn’t realize that it was you Gibbs, is everything ok?”

He replies “Hi Jemima, I was so sorry to hear about Ed. Were you around tonight to see something or someone suspicious hanging around?”

She answers “Thanks Gibbs. I didn’t see anything when I went out earlier and there certainly wasn’t anything when I came back here again. Look I’m a child minder now, so do you need any help?”

He replies “That would be good thank you, as a baby has been left outside of agent DiNozzo’s door here. And from the look of things they’ve just left him here with nothing, so if you could help that would be great.”

She says “Of course I’m happy to help and you’re quite lucky because today was my last day for a few weeks, so I’ll do all I can to help you out. I should think that as we don’t know how long he’s been here for, he’ll probably need a bath and a change of clothes. I’m also presuming that you’re also going to want everything for evidence as well?”

Gibbs replies “We will do and we’re also going to head to the Navy Yard to make sure that he is also the father.”

She says “ok, I’ll go and get a bath for him sorted; I’ll leave the door open for you to bring him in. I’ve also got a push chair and pram that you can borrow to take him or if it will be easier I could help you take him in. And he’ll most probably need a feed as well.”

Gibbs then thanks her before he says quietly enough for Tony not to hear “Thank you and do you think that you could help him out with learning how to be a father if it does turn out that he is.”

She answers “Of course I will do Gibbs, anything to help NCIS out.” And with that she goes inside to get everything sorted out.

 

After getting Adam sorted out, they learnt his name from the note that had been left with him, with a bath; feed and change, Gibbs with Tony go onto the Navy Yard first with Jem and Adam in the car seat in her car following them. As she parks up Gibbs and Tony come back to meet her at the car, before getting Adam out of his seat she goes to get the pram out of her trunk, but Tony ends up doing it. She then gets Adam out of the seat and puts him in the pram covering him over with the blankets, before they then head inside. After getting she and Adam sorted out with their visitor badges, because of the way she takes a really deep breath as they all get onto the elevator and Gibbs notices it he says to her “Are you ok?”

She answers “I’m fine. It’s just that I’ve not been in this place since just before I lost Ed, and it’s just a bit harder to do this than I thought it would be.”

With that Gibbs takes her hand and gives it a squeeze as he says “If you do find that it starts to get too hard for you being here just give us a shout and you can get out of here.”

She gives him a sad smile and says “I should think that I’ll be ok, but I will do.”

 

Their final destination is of course Abby’s lab, as soon as Abby sees Jem she’s straight over to her giving her a hug and Jem says “Hi Abs.”

Abby replies “Hi Jem, are you ok?”

She replies “I’m fine and I’m finally settled after deciding to stay.”

Abby says “And I’m so glad that you have decided to stay and we will have to sort out some time to have a catch up.”

She replies “We will have to, so how do you want to play this?”

Abby answers “I think that we’ll get Tony done first, that way it gives you a chance to get this little cutie sorted out.”

 

As she then gets Adam out of his outdoor suit and coat Abby hands over the swab to be taken to Tony and says “Here you go you can do this for yourself, as I remember what you said before when I wanted a swab from you.”

 

He takes it from her and does do the swab himself, with of course managing to go too far with things and making himself wretch, which then makes Abby and Jem look at each other with a look of “such a child!” on their faces. After getting Adam out of his things Gibbs finds her a seat and she sits down with Adam in her arms, then as she moves to keep his arms out of the way, while Gibbs tries to keep him entertained, while Abby then attempts to do the swab on him and she does manage to get it done ok, although of course Adam doesn’t like it and after a few wretches of his own he finally starts to cry, so Jem gets up and starts walking round the lab rocking him in her arms and talking quietly to him. In the end because of walking past where Abby keeps Burt the hippo, he grabs him off the shelf, she then sits down with Adam again and because of knowing full well about Burt’s farting noise she gives him a gentle squeeze so it doesn’t come out too loudly and Adam’s crying soon becomes gales of laughter.

 

While they wait for the results to come through they all head up to the conference room, as Gibbs joins them following having gone on a coffee run and puts a cup in front of Jem he says “You sure you’re ok to be in here?” Showing his concern because he knows that it was in this room where she was told the news of her husband’s death.

She replies “I’m fine; this hasn’t been as difficult as I thought it might have been. Although in a way I’m now wishing that I hadn’t gone and cut my ties with everyone now, as it’s made me realize just how much I’ve actually missed everyone so much.”

He says “I know that because you were going to be leaving you did it to save you from hurting later on if we lost touch then, so you were thinking it was the right thing to do. Just remember that now you have decided to remain here and settle that we are all here for you.”

She replies “I will do and even when this case finishes I promise that I will stay in touch with you all this time.”

He says “I really hope that you will do, although I doubt that I could end up persuading you to come back as an agent again though?”

She answers “I don’t know as it’s been so hard trying to get the business set up and I do really love my new job, but honestly I don’t even know if I could do the job now after being away from it for such a long time now.”

He says “Well if you do ever change your mind about it, then you know where to come.”

She replies “I do and I will do.”

 

A little while later Abby comes up to tell them all the news that Tony is indeed the father of Adam, and as soon as he gets that news, he goes over and takes him out of Jemima’s arms to hold him for the first time. After a while Gibbs says that they should all head home before things end up turning into a very late night. He also tells Tony that he should also take some personal leave so that he can have a chance of being able to bond with Adam, plus officially he would have to be benched while they were investigating the case anyway, so if he was away on leave they wouldn’t have to worry about that having to happen. Although the thing they would need from him of course would be the list of people he had slept with, but they knew already that they could at least exclude one person from that list, namely Jeanne Bennoit. Tony then admits that other than having slept with her in the right time frame the only other person that he had slept with was Paula Cassidy, but how could they prove it with her now being gone, plus if Adam was her son who would he have been put with and why would that person have now decided to give him up for, and of course why hadn’t Paula told him anything about his son. To which Gibbs told him as he put his hand on his shoulder to not worry about it because they would get those answers he wanted for him.

 

For journey back to the apartments Tony goes in Jemima’s car with her and Adam, and because of her apartment being a two bed one unlike Tony’s only being a one bed, she asks him if she would like to take that with Adam, rather than them having to sort some stuff out and take them back to his apartment. He says that if she doesn’t mind then he thinks it might be easier for him to take the spare room, so he says that if she doesn’t mind once they get Adam sorted out and settled when they got back again, he’d leave him with her while he went to his apartment to go and get some stuff for himself. To which she tells him that she doesn’t mind doing that at all. So when they finally get in she watches Tony doing his first nappy change, which he does really well with and only ends up needing a couple of pointers to help him out with, then after doing the nappy change they then put him into some PJ’s and get him settled into the cot that she has in the room for when the babies she looks after go down for a nap. Once they’ve done that she also sets up the baby monitor and takes the other one into the lounge so that they can hear him if he wakes up.

 

When Tony comes back from getting some things from his apartment she then gets them some drinks and joins him on the sofa, as they sit together he all of a sudden says “So if you don’t mind me asking, how do you know Gibbs so well and with him saying about having you back again, does it mean that you were once an agent?”

She answers “I was many years ago now, I was actually Gibbs very first Probie when NCIS came to the Navy Yard for the first time, I first started though just before Mike Franks retired so I was also working with the both of them for a short time. It was also at the Navy Yard that I met my husband Ed, as he was also an agent. We dated and then of course got married, where we also ended up working in the New York and Rota offices, before finally coming back to the Navy Yard again. Sadly he was killed in a car crash last year, before we found out about the crash though, Jenny had got Gibbs to bring me in to tell me that he had gone missing. That was why he was so concerned about us being in the conference room, because that was where he later broke the news to me that Ed had been killed. It had been a genuine accident though, which was why I never got to meet you or the rest of your team.”

He says “I’m so sorry, I know that back then things were so very different because when I joined it was just me and Gibbs on our own as the initial team, then it got made bigger with Kate coming to join us before then finally McGee. So did you and Ed constitute breaking rule 12?”

She replies with a smile “It did, and there was many a time that Gibbs did threaten to get one of us sent somewhere else to separate the two of us, but in the end the two of us proved that we could make our relationship work by keeping our working and personal relationship separate, so eventually Gibbs came round to the idea of the two of us being together.”

He then asks her “If you don’t mind me asking, I know that you’ve moved about and things, but why did you give up on being an agent?”

She answers “It was when we went to New York because not long after the move out there I found out that I was pregnant, and with the prospect of being a mother I felt that I needed to give up to look after my child. Sadly though I lost the baby and with that happening and the life we had there, it just made me feel like I needed a complete change, so I went back to university and did both a child care and psychology degree. Because of that we also decided on putting the having a family thing to one side, plus I felt that if we did try again that I couldn’t go through the heartbreak of loosing another one so soon again if that had happened as well. After Rota we knew that the move back here was going to be a permanent one, so once we settled we had started to try again for a family shortly before Ed was killed.”

He then asks “So why did you cut everyone out after he passed away?”

She answers with a sigh “Don’t get me wrong I do really love Gibbs and Abby, and don’t get me wrong if it hadn’t been for Gibbs being there for me I don’t think I would have managed to get through everything, because he was my real rock in that hard time, especially in the times when I did just want to give everything up, despite he and Ed also having been close friends and going through his own grief for him. I suppose a lot of it was that he knew what I was going through because of him going through it when he lost his wife and daughter. I ended up being let down in a big way because I was actually going to go to the UK, as a friend of mine had offered me a job in the nursery that she was supposed to have been opening, but the place that she was buying for the nursery ended up falling through. Luckily for me I had only gone over there for a visit when it happened, but when I came back again I still had to find a new place for myself because the house sale had already gone through. But as I’d got ready for the move to the UK as I thought it was going to be I kept in touch with Gibbs and Abby less and less. So I suppose that because of them knowing what my plans had been, when they fell through I felt slightly ashamed and scared to get in touch with them again and tell them about it. But I had been feeling a bit better about things with finding this place and finally getting the business set up. Look I know that you’ve got some decisions and things to make now, but when you do get back to work again if you want me too I will be happy to take care of Adam for you, that also includes if you have any early morning call outs or if you have to work really late. As even though it has been a year for me now since I lost Ed I still haven’t got out of the habit of all those dreaded early mornings, and still find myself awake in the early hours at times as well. Plus I do know what the job is like, so unlike I do with my other clients I won’t put any conditions or limits on you.” 

He replies “Thank you, and thank you for your help.” He then sighs and adds “I don’t mean this in a horrible way, but this just tops off a really horrible and hard year.”

She asks “Why, what’s happened?”

He answers “The reason why we excluded one person off of the list for Gibbs was because I was only with that woman for undercover purposes, but I made a big mistake by actually falling in love with her. I realized that I was on the day that the person I said there was a good chance could be his mother was killed. Her name was Paula and we met during a case where we got sent to Gitmo to investigate her. After that she became an agent afloat and we did make a really good go of things. The weekend that I think she may have conceived Adam was the weekend where we ended things. We’d just lost our colleague Kate, as she was killed in action, which hit us all really hard. Or it could have been a couple of months later when she was with us working on a case, before Ziva joined the team, we made the mistake of having a one night stand while she was with us. After that we then didn’t see each other again until the day that she was killed. She lost her team first in an explosion, and it was then us that got thrown into the investigation. Due to her grief when we uncovered who the bomber was, he’d got another bomb strapped to himself and she then died when he let the bomb off behind this wall, as the place used to be a joke shop. We never talked that day about us at all, but she knew how I felt about Jeanne and told me that I should tell her the truth, which in my grief for Paula I did do. The only thing is if Paula is his mother I’m never going to know if she was going to tell me the truth about him or not on the day that she died. Of course after then having told Jeanne the truth about how I felt about her, it then all came tumbling down a few weeks later when my cover got blown. She did ask me to choose between remaining in the job and giving it all up so that I could be with her. Even though I was in love with her, I just couldn’t walk away from the job and I stayed.” 

She says “Early on I made that same mistake, before me and Ed had met obliviously. Gibbs got me out though as he knew things had gone too far, but it was still too late in a way as Steve sent me a letter saying chose him or the job and at that point I knew that I wanted to stay with the job. So do you think you’ll get out there again and try to find someone else or are you going to wait?”

He answers “I think not only for Adam’s sake as I get to bond with him, but if I’m also honest with loosing the two women that I really loved on top of one another, because I did still really love Paula. I think that it may end up being a while before I find someone else again. What about you?”

She answers “It’s hard to say really, because there’s part of me that would like to get out there and find someone special again, but after having been married for ten years to Ed, I think it’s going to be really hard trying not match them to him. Although I do know for definite that I won’t be doing like Gibbs and re-marrying over and over again. The thing is it’s also only been a year since I lost him and I really don’t know how long it should be respectable to his memory to start dating again, even if I do know that Ed would want to see me happy again.”

 

They then all of a sudden get interrupted by Adam letting out a cry and Tony says “He can’t be hungry again surely?”

She replies “Nope that’s a needing to be changed cry, and I also have a feeling Mr DiNozzo you may be about to experience your first dirty nappy.”

He then asks “How can you tell the difference between the cries?”

She answers “I suppose in a way some of it is women’s intuition with some of it, but you do also get to learn it by the tone of the cry if you really listen to it.”

 

They then both go into the room and she watches as Tony get’s him up and puts him on the changing table, and then changes him. Which he actually manages to do quite well and only needs a couple of pointers as to what he’s doing. Of course by the time they’ve got him all done though he is once again wide awake, so she says “You know that one of the best ways to bond with him is skin to skin contact, as that’s why they put babies onto their mothers as soon as possible after birth, so take your shirt off.” He does so and she then adds “Ok, now pick him up so that he’s against you as much as possible. If you can manage to do that a few times a day you might find that you’ll bond a lot quicker. As I know that if Paula was his mom he would’ve been bonded with her, but I think that it may be possible that whoever she left him with didn’t bond with him. And I wouldn’t be surprised if once Gibbs catches up with them we will find out that it was the reason why they gave him up to you, as it may have got to the point that they couldn’t cope with him anymore because of not having any bond. Plus doing this also helps with him learning your smell, because babies do have a strong sense of smell and he will soon know when it’s you that enters a room because of that. I’ll leave the both of you alone for now, as I can get the bond I need with him when I look after him for you and he will then learn that I’m also a safe person for him. If there is anything you need during the night though, don’t hesitate to give me nudge to help with something and you will soon also know when it’s safe to be able to put him down again without waking him again.” She then says “goodnight” to him and heads for bed.


End file.
